Our tour continues! In Part II of our Yugoslavian Adventure Series, we visited the famous Sebilj of Sarajevo, saw Baščaršija at night and ran into a very obscure gothic-industrial art installation of unknown origin!

Now, we should visit a museum.

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A City Scared by War

We walk up to the Historical Museum of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which is housed in a big concrete cube a few meters down the road from the Bosnian National Museum. As you can see, the surface of the building is still marked by bullet, grenade and shrapnel holes from the Bosnian War (1992–1995), which was part of the overall Yugoslavian War that followed the breakdown of the SFRY.

War marks like these are still very common in the whole city. You see them in the city center and on apartment buildings in the outskirts alike.

Sarajevo keeps reading books. A picture from the war.

Sarajevo was one of the cities that was most severely affected by the Yugoslavian War, as its defenders and civilian population were besieged for over 3 years. The people had to survive under constant artillery shelling from the surrounding hills, endure food and water shortages and vicious sniper battles in the streets. Overall, nearly 14 000 people died during the siege, of which 5500 were civilians.

Beware, Snipers! These signs became infamous during the siege.

However, don't be fooled into thinking that the attrocities were one-sided. The museum and all other war exhibitions I have visited in Sarajevo do a wonderful job in explaining how the violence of the war became almost senseless and that excesses happened on all sides. Keep in mind that Sarajevo used to be a very mixed city and is now >80% Bosnian-Muslim.

This Bosnian flag hung from the Presidential Palace during the siege. It looks different from the present-day flag because the current design was adopted in 1998.

To this day, the Yugoslavian War is so polemicised that not everyone even calls it the "Yugoslavian War". In Serbia, which is the successor of the SFRY, it is better known as the "Yugoslavian Civil War", while the Croatians call it their "Fatherland War". You will hear as many opinions about it as there are countries which have participated in it.

The defenders were short on weapons and munitions and had to improvise. One of these guns is the Soviet WWII-era PPSH machinegun. Others are homemade weapons.

I tried to talk about this topic in as neutral a way as I could. However, I can't possibly present it as tastefully as this museum. I have shown you some of the most interesting highlights here, but most of the exhibition consisted of big cardboards with photographs and explanations of each stage of the siege. They showed human suffering from an unbiased point of view and tried to explain the political processes that lead to the siege in a way that emphasised that such a catastrophe should never be repeated again and could have been prevented in the first place.

Outside of the museum. A small display of heavy guns and mortars.

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Sarajevo From Above

Now, back to a more optimistic topic! We drive to the most awesome vantage point of Sarajevo called Zmajevac, which could mean something like snake or dragon hill. I swear there was a local myth that explained the name, but alas, I forgot it.

What I did not forget was the astonishing view on Sarajevo covered in myst! And since this is such a perfect point to overlook the city, there used to be a medieval fortification on this hill. However, only a few stones remain of it and the place is now apparently used by teenage couples to have some 'alone time'.

Medieval mosques to our left and modern skyscrapers on the horizon. If you have just one minute to see Sarajevo, you should do it from here.

This place is also associated with an iconic scene from the Yugoslavian WWII movie "Walter Brani Sarajevo", where a German commander asks his officer "Who is Walter?" (Walter is the nome de guerre of the film's main protagonist, a Yugoslavian partisan), upon which the other German points towards Sarajevo and responds: "This is Walter!"

According to my local friend, this is an old beer brewery established by Franziskaner monks. The city landscape is as much Austrian as it is Ottoman.

There are also many coffee houses and bars on this hill, and I really do recommend the coffee! Bosnian coffee is the best I ever had and I brought like five or six bags of it back home. Well worth the money! And here it goes down with an amazing view and cheap filterless Drina cigarettes. If you are in Bosnia or Serbia and are a smoker, you should try Drina – but only once.

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TO BE CONTINUED

This is it for today! I'll see you tomorrow in Part IV, where we are going to check out some of Sarajevo's many Christian churches and are going to visit the city's Lion Cementary, which has many stories of its own to tell! If you like my content, please follow me and resteem it! I appreciate it very much. :)